DARPA to Get a New $100 Million Headquarters in Arlington, Virginia Courtesy of Holliday Fenoglio Fowler Financing

Click the actual link to the press release about DARPA's new $100 million headquarters if you don't trust my cut and paste abilities.

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HFF Arranges $100 Million Permanent Financing for DARPA's Future Headquarters in Arlington, Virginia WASHINGTON, Jan 10, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- The Washington, D.C. office of HFF (Holliday Fenoglio Fowler, L.P.) announced today that it has arranged a $100 million permanent loan for the 355,000-square-foot future headquarters of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington, Virginia. This project is the first phase of the 1.2 million-square-foot Founders Square mixed-use development. HFF senior managing directors Bill Asbill and Bob Donhauser and director Dan McIntyre worked exclusively on behalf of the borrower, Ashton Park Associates I, LLC, to secure an 18-month forward commitment from Prudential Mortgage Capital Company, the commercial mortgage lending business of Prudential Financial, for a 15-year, fixed-rate loan. In 2009, HFF arranged the $98 million construction loan for the project with Landesbank Hessen-Thuringen, also known as Heleba. The Shooshan Company is handling the development of the property, which was designed by RTKL. Clark Construction Group is the general contractor. The 13-story, trophy quality office building is due for completion in the first quarter of 2012. The property will meet the Department of Defense's Level IV security standards and is designed to be certified LEED-Gold. Situated at 675 North Randolph Street, the property is across from the Ballston Common Mall in the heart of Washington, D.C.'s Rosslyn-Ballston Corridor (R-B Corridor). Formed in 1986, The Shooshan Company has planned, developed, managed and/or leased approximately two million square feet in the Rosslyn-Ballston Corridor. Projects include One and Two Liberty Center, The Residences at Liberty Center, Liberty Tower, Arlington Square, One Virginia Square and Quincy Street Station. Holliday Fenoglio Fowler, LP ("HFF") and HFF Securities LP ("HFFS") are owned by HFF, Inc. (NYSE: HF). HFF operates out of 17 offices nationwide and is a leading provider of commercial real estate and capital markets services to the U.S. commercial real estate industry. HFF together with its affiliate HFFS offer clients a fully integrated national capital markets platform including debt placement, investment sales, advisory services, structured finance, private equity, loan sales, and commercial loan servicing. www.hfflp.com. SOURCE: HFF HFF William S. Asbill, 202-533-2500 Senior Managing Director wasbill@hfflp.com or Daniel J. McIntyre, 202-533-2500 Director dmcintyre@hfflp.com or Kristen M. Murphy, 713-852-3500 Associate Director, Marketing krmurphy@hfflp.com

Cold Weather Kills Nearly 10,000 Cattle in Vietnam

Image source - Thomas Schoch (Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic)

Birds are falling out of the sky. Fish are washing up on shore. And now cattle are dying by the thousands in Vietnam due to cold weather.

The Veterinary Department of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) announced about huge losses in cattle caused by the long cold spell in recent days.

The department stated the costly deaths occurred despite the best efforts of local authorities and people to save their livestock.

Following statistics at 4pm on January 16, total of 9,248 heads of cattle died in provinces including Lang Son, Yen Bai, Cao Bang, Bac Can, Ha Giang, Tuyen Quang, Son La, Quang Ninh, Hoa Binh, Lao Cai, Bac Giang, Lai Chau, Ha Tinh and Quang Binh.

Source: Voice of Vietnam

Central Bank of Ireland to Begin Printing €51 Billion of Its Own Money!

Ireland may be a canary in the coal mine for the state of the European economy like Iceland was a couple of years back such that the Irish financial state may be a predictor of future economic shocks in the rest of the European Union. Fake money is never a good thing for an economy and similar to our Federal Reserve, the Central Bank of Ireland is about to start printing its own money. As the Wu-Tang Clan once said, "Cash rules everything around me."

EMERGENCY lending from the ECB to banks in Ireland fell in December, the first decline since January 2010, but only because the Irish Central Bank stepped up its help to banks.

The Irish Independent learnt last night that the Central Bank of Ireland is financing €51bn of an emergency loan programme by printing its own money.

Source: Independent.ie

Thief Steals Laptop Containing Irreplaceable Prostate Cancer Cure Research Data

This post should serve as an example of why you should always backup your work - especially when you are working on novel cancer research. A husband and wife cancer research team left their laptop in the car while they stuffed their faces at Panera. Unfortunately, they also decided to keep their valuable (potentially life-saving) data on this non-secure laptop and of course, someone jacked the laptop.

Unfortunately, most of the data was never backed up, a mistake Shin said could be a major setback in the fight against cancer.

Some of that data can never be replicated. Other parts of that research could take up to two years to do over. That's earth shattering considering 30,000 men die in the U.S. every year from prostate cancer, meaning people could lose their lives all because of a crime.

Source: News9.com (Oklahoma City)

President Obama Wants an Internet ID for All Americans (Secretary Locke's Remarks at National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace 2011)

While the government currently has the ability to track, trace and database a person's Internet usage, it cannot do so as easily when a person uses the Internet from work or from a public Internet terminal. However, a universal Internet ID eliminates this potential tracking issue, because the Internet ID would be unique to each individual Internet user in the United States of America. The White House now wants everyone to have an Internet ID. No word on what happens when a person's Internet ID is hacked or identity-jacked by nefarious parties to do evil deeds.

"We are not talking about a government-controlled system. What we are talking about is enhancing online security and privacy, and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorize a dozen passwords, through creation and use of more trusted digital identities," Locke continued.

Source: NBC Bay Area ; White House - Cyberspace Policy Review: Assuring a Trusted and Resilient Information and Communications Infrastructure

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The remarks were made by Commerce Secretary Gary Locke at the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) at Stanford University on January 7, 2011. A transcript of the event can be viewed through Google Documents (an excerpt is below) and the highlighted portion below can be viewed at the 08:55 mark in the above video.

To help meet these challenges, the Obama administration recently released a comprehensive cyberspace policy review outlining a series of necessary actions by the public and private sector including improving identity solutions, identity management services, and privacy enhancing technologies. This review has helped to lay the groundwork for the administrations forthcoming national strategy for trusted I'dties in cyberspace, or NSTIC. The final version of this strategy will be signed by the president in the coming mods and Howard Schmidt will be from the White House will be talking more about this in just a few minutes. And many of you are familiar with the public draft release this past summer, and many of you participated in the open public process with comments on the strategy and we very much want to thank you for your thoughts and your recommendations. The end game of course, is to create an identity ecosystem where individuals and organizations can complete on-line transactions with greater confidence. Putting greater trust in the on-line identities of each other, and greater trust in the infrastructure that the transactions run over. Let's be clear, we're not talking about a national ID card. We're [not] talking about a government controlled system. But what we are talking about is enhancing on-line security and privacy and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorizing a dozen password through the creation and use of more trusted digital I'dties. To accomplish this, we're going to need your help. And we need the private sector's expertise and involvement in designing, building and implementing this identity ecosystem. To succeed we'll also need a national program office at the Department of Commerce focused on implementing our trusted I'dties strategy. The commerce department already has an expensive experience in this realm. Last April for instance we launched an inter net policy task force to address the most pressing Internet issues of the day. The task force was made up of experts from a contrast the department, experts in trade policy, intellectual property, information policy, Cybersecurity, and standards. And the task force is working on develop Cybersecurity policy recommendations for the commercial sector, as well as policy recommendations on other Internet issues like privacy, copy right protection, and international eCommerce. We've reached out expensively for public comments on all these topics and the task force just last month released initial recommendation for strengthening on-line privacy protection. The commerce department has the National Institute of Standards and Technology, one of the preeminent laboratories within the Federal Government that's part of the commerce department. It also has significant long standing investments in Cybersecurity R&D and in standard dags programs. And all of this experience can help a new program office be effective facilitators for both government and private sector engagement and indeed private sector leadership. In the end, we want to build consensus on legal and policy frame works necessary to make the trusted I'dties strategy successful, including ways to enhance privacy, free expression and open markets. We want to work with industry to identify where new standards or collaborative efforts may be needed and we want to support inner governmental collaboration and we want to support important pilot projects. These are important undertakings. And today's symposium and today's announcement is just an early step in a much longer journey. Of course, we all know that these pilot projects, any follow-on commercial deployments and the immersed ens of an identity ecosystem itself will not be a pan see a. There is no magic bullet to solve all the Cybersecurity issued out there. ( However we do know that robust identity solutions can substantially enhance the trustworthiness of on-line transactions. And they not only can improve security, but if done properly, can enhance privacy as well. Such an I'd identity ecosystem must be led by people that made Internet the Internet what it is today. That's why Howard and and Pat Gallagher our. Have come to Silicon Valley, which remains an epi center of American in in ovation and entrepreneur and Pat's going to be here for the rest of the day to talk more about our efforts but also to gather input from all of you.